Lockwood (22 page)

‘No shame in that,’ I said, crunching on a gherkin. ‘We do that too.’

‘
We
aren’t seen creeping home after midnight with a bulging bag over our shoulders, and grave-dirt dripping from our shovels. One paper says he’d sometimes have a servant lad with him, poor kid dragging heaven knows what behind him in a heavy sack.’

‘Hard to believe no one arrested him,’ I said. ‘If there were witnesses . . .’

‘It may be that he had friends in high-ish places,’ George went on. ‘I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, a couple of years later the
Gazette
reports that someone went into Bickerstaff’s house – it had been standing empty; I guess no one wanted to buy it – and discovered a secret panel in the living room. And behind that panel they found . . .’ He chuckled, paused dramatically. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘A body,’ I said.

‘Bones.’ Lockwood took some crisps.

George’s face fell. ‘Yeah. Oh, I suppose I’d given you the clue. Anyway, yes, they found all sorts of body parts stacked in a hidden room. Some of them seemed very old. This confirmed that the good doctor had been going round digging up things he shouldn’t, but precisely
why
he should do so wasn’t clear.’

‘And
this
didn’t make the headlines, either?’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ve got to admit that’s odd.’

‘What about Bickerstaff’s friends?’ I said, frowning. ‘Didn’t Joplin say there was a whole gang of them?’

George nodded. ‘Yes, and I made progress here. One article gave the names of two of his supposed associates, people who were meant to have been at this final gathering at his house. They were young aristocrats named’ – he consulted some notes for a moment – ‘Lady Mary Dulac and the Honourable Simon Wilberforce. Both were rich, with reputations for being interested in strange ideas. Anyway, get this . . .’ George’s eyes glinted. ‘From other references I’ve found it seems Bickerstaff wasn’t the
only
one to disappear in 1877. Dulac and Wilberforce
also vanished
around that same time.’

‘What, as in never-seen-again vanished?’ I said.

‘Right. Well, certainly in Wilberforce’s case.’ He grinned at us. ‘Of course there were rewards offered, questions asked in Parliament, but no one seems to have openly made the connection with Bickerstaff. Some people must have known, though. I think it was hushed up. Anyway, now we move on ten years, to the sudden reappearance of Mary Dulac . . .’ He rummaged in his stack of papers. ‘Where is it? I’m sure I had it. Ah, here we go. I’ll read it to you. It’s from the
Daily Telegraph
, in the summer of 1886 – a long time after the Bickerstaff affair:

‘
Madwoman Captured: The so-called “Wild-woman of Chertsey Forest”, a scrawny vagabond whose demented howls have caused consternation in this wooded district for several weeks, has at last been apprehended by police. Under interrogation at the town hall, the lunatic, who gave her name as Mary or May Dulac, claimed to have been living like a beast for many years. Her ravings, matted hair and hideous appearance disturbed several gentlemen present, and she was quickly removed to Chertsey Asylum.
’

A silence fell after George finished.

‘Is it just me,’ Lockwood said, ‘or do bad things happen to people who have anything to do with Bickerstaff?’

‘Let’s hope that doesn’t include us,’ I said.

‘I haven’t got to the bottom of the Dulac business yet,’ George added. ‘I want to go to Chertsey, check out the Records Office there. The asylum was shut in 1904. Among the items listed as being removed from its library and taken to the Records Office at the time was something called “The Confessions of Mary Dulac”. To me, that sounds worth reading.’

‘It certainly does,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘Though I suppose, being a madwoman’s confessions, it might just be about eating bugs and things in the woods. Still, you never know. Well done, George. This is excellent.’

‘It’s just a shame there’s nothing about that mirror,’ George said. ‘It killed that guy Neddles in the cemetery, and it did something weird to me. I can’t help wondering if it was involved in Bickerstaff’s death as well. Anyway, I’ll keep looking. The only other interesting thing I found out was about that hospital Bickerstaff worked at – Green Gates Sanatorium on Hampstead Heath.’

‘Joplin said it burned down, didn’t he?’ I said.

‘Yeah. In 1908, with quite a loss of life. The site remained undeveloped for more than fifty years, until someone tried building a housing estate there.’

Lockwood whistled. ‘What were they thinking? Who builds houses on the site of an old Victorian hospital that burned down in tragic circumstances?’

George nodded. ‘I know. It’s almost the first rule of planning. As you’d expect, there were enough supernatural disturbances for the project to be shelved. But when I was looking at the plans I discovered something. Most of the site’s just grassland now: a few walls, overgrown ruins. But there
is
one building standing.’

We looked at him. ‘You mean . . .’

‘Turns out Bickerstaff’s house was set slightly away from the main part of the hospital. It wasn’t touched by the fire. It’s still there.’

‘Used for what?’ I said.

‘Nothing. It’s derelict, I think.’

‘As you’d expect, given its history. Who in their right mind would go there?’ Lockwood sat back in his chair. ‘Great work, George. Tomorrow you nip down to Chertsey. Lucy and I will try to pick up Jack Carver’s trail – though how we’ll do that, I haven’t a clue. He’s well and truly disappeared. Right, I’m off upstairs. I’m totally bushed, plus it’s high time I got out of these shorts.’

He made to rise. At that moment there was a knock at the front door. Two knocks. A brisk
tap-tap
.

We looked at each other. One after another we slowly pushed our chairs back and went out into the hall.

The knocking came again.

‘What time is it, George?’ Lockwood didn’t need to ask, really. There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece, a grandfather clock in the corner and, from his parents’ collection, an African dream-catching timepiece that told the hour using ostrich feathers, cheetah bones and a revolving nautilus shell. One way and another, we knew what time it was.

‘Twenty minutes to midnight,’ George said. ‘Late.’

Far too late for any mortal visitor. None of us actually
said
this, but it was what we were all thinking.

‘You replaced that loose tile in the iron line, of course, Lucy,’ Lockwood said as we looked down past the coats and the table with the crystal lantern. The only lights in the hall were the faint yellow spears spilling out from the kitchen. Various tribal totems hovered in the fuzzy half-dark; the door itself could not be seen.

‘Almost,’ I said.

‘Almost finished?’

‘Almost got round to starting.’

Another double-knock sounded at the end of the hall.

‘Why don’t they ring the bell?’ George said. ‘The notice clearly says you have to ring the bell.’

‘It’s not going to be a Stone Knocker,’ I said slowly. ‘Or a Tom O’Shadows. Even with the break in the iron line, they’d surely be too weak . . .’

‘That’s right,’ Lockwood said. ‘It won’t be a ghost. It’s probably Barnes or Flo.’

‘That’s it! Of course! Flo. It must be Flo. She goes out at night.’

‘Of course she does. We should let her in.’

‘Yes.’

None of us moved along the hall.

‘Where was that recent strangling case?’ George said. ‘Where the ghost knocked on the window and killed the old lady?’

‘George, that was a window! This is a door!’

‘So what? They’re both rectangular apertures! I can be strangled too!’

Another knock – a single one, a clashing reverberation on the wood.

‘Oh, to hell with this,’ Lockwood snarled. He strode down the hall, switched on the crystal lantern, snatched up a rapier from the umbrella-stand beside the coats. Bending close to the door, he spoke loudly through the wood. ‘Hello? Who is it?’

No answer came.

Lockwood ran a hand through his hair. He flicked the chains aside, undid the latch. Before opening the door, he looked back at George and me. ‘Got to be done,’ he said. ‘It might be someone who needs our—’

The door burst open, knocking into Lockwood; he was flung back hard against the shelves. Masks and gourds toppled, crashing to the floor. A hunched black shape careered into the hallway. I caught a glimpse of a white, contorted face, two madly staring eyes. Lockwood tried to bring his rapier round, but the shape was on him, clawing at his front. George and I sprang forward, came pelting down the hall. A horrid gargling cry. The thing fell back, away from Lockwood, out into the lantern-light. It was a living man, mouth open, gulping like a fish. His long gingery hair was wet with sweat. He wore black jeans and jacket, a stained black T-shirt. Heavy lace-up boots stumbled on the floor.

George gasped. Realization hit me too.

‘Carver,’ I said. ‘That’s Jack Carver. The one who stole . . .’

The man’s fingers scrabbled at his neck, as if he were trying to pull words loose from his throat. He took one step towards us, and another – then, as if newly boneless, his legs gave way. He collapsed forward onto the parquet flooring, striking his face hard. Lockwood pushed himself away from the shelves; George and I halted, staring. All three of us gazed at the body laid out on the hall before us, at the twitching fingers, at the dark stain spreading out beneath him; most of all at the long curved dagger driven deep into his back.

As always, Lockwood was fastest to react. ‘Lucy, take the rapier.’ He tossed it over. ‘Go to the door. Just a quick look, then barricade us in.’

Cool night air swirled around me as I stepped between the body and the key table. I crossed the threshold and looked out into the street. Our tiled path was empty, the gate at the end hung open. The streetlight outside number 35 cast its bland apricot-pink radiance in a cone across the pavement. One porch was illuminated in a house opposite; another had an upstairs bathroom light on. Otherwise the houses were dark. From down the end of the road I could hear the ghost-lamp’s rumbling hum. It was off right now. Within the next two minutes it would come on again. I saw no one. Nothing moved.

Keeping the rapier in a guard position, I walked out a little further, across the line of iron tiles. I peered down into the basement yard. Empty. I listened. Silence across the city. London slept. And while it slept, ghosts and murderers walked free. I stepped back into the house and closed the door, flipped the locks and pulled the chain across.

Lockwood and George were crouching by the fallen body, George shuffling sideways to avoid the spreading pool of blood. Lockwood had his fingers on the man’s neck.

‘He’s alive,’ he said. ‘Lucy – call a night ambulance. DEPRAC too. George, help me roll him over.’

George frowned. ‘Shouldn’t we leave him? If we move—’

‘Look at him; he doesn’t have long. Get him on his side.’

While they did the business, I went into the library and made the calls.

When I got back they had him facing the shelves; he lay with his arm outstretched beneath his head, and his eyes half open. The pool of blood hadn’t got any smaller. Lockwood, crouching low, bent close beside his face; George, pencil and paper in hand, knelt at his back. I hovered close, near George.

‘He’s been trying to say something,’ George said. ‘But it’s hellish faint. Something about bogeys.’

‘Shhh!’ Lockwood hissed. ‘You misheard, I keep telling you. It was “bone glass”, clear as day. He means the thing he stole. Jack, Jack, can you hear me?’

‘Bone glass?’ I had a sudden flash of the little mirrored object, clasped across the corpse’s breast. Its rim had been uneven, smooth and brown – I’d assumed it had been made of wood. Was it bone, then? And if so – what
kind
of bone? Or whose?

George leaned close. ‘Sounded very much like “bogeys” to me.’

‘Shut up, George!’ Lockwood growled. ‘Jack – who did this? Can you tell me?’

The dying man just lay there. Strange to see him now, after all our searching. The fearsome, ruthless relic-man, Jack Carver. Flo had said that he wore the threat of violence round him like a cloak. That he was a killer. Perhaps so, but now that violence had been done to
him
, he wasn’t at all how I’d imagined. Younger, to begin with, and scrawnier too, with a gaunt, tight look about the cheekbones. There was something indefinably ill-fed about him, a look of constant desperation. His jacket hung loose about the thin white neck, which had a patch of shaving rash under the jaw. His T-shirt was dirty; his jacket smelled bad, as if the leather hadn’t been successfully cured.